Friday, October 30 – 7:00 PM CST

For the third straight season, South Florida started the season at least 5-0 before suffering a midseason losing streak. They’ve lost two straight games to ranked Big East opponents and now face do or die situation against WVU before they close their season with a difficult stretch of games.

West Virginia, meanwhile, is heading in a completely different direction. After an 11-point loss @Auburn on Sep. 19 (a game in which they out-yarded the Tigers 519-400), WV has won four straight by an average of 13.7 PPG.

The Mountaineers enter this game after an emotional comeback victory over UConn while the Bulls enter it after a 27 point shellacking at the hands of Pittsburgh. Both teams could really use a victory to gain a little credibility in the Big East conference.

QB Problems

After USF Senior QB Matt Grothe was lost for the year with a torn ACL, redshirt freshmen BJ Daniels stepped in and led the Bulls to two straight wins and it looked as if South Florida was going to be alright. But Daniels has regressed in the last two games, completing just 47% of his passes for 131 yards per game and throwing 4 interceptions and 1 touchdown.

Daniels was benched in the Bulls’ blowout loss to Cincinnati a week ago and now he faces a West Virginia ‘D’ that has allowed just 52% completions and forced 9 interceptions the past 4 weeks.

Mountaineer QB Jarrett Brown is also suffering through a cold streak. He was knocked out of the game against Marshall and has thrown for a meager 5 touchdowns and 5 interceptions the past 5 games.

West Virginia running back Noel Devine has had quite an October. He has rushed for 592 yards on a 6.8 YPC average with 6 total touchdowns in the current month with a chance to add to those numbers Friday night. In the 2nd half of last weeks game against UConn, Devine had 14 carries for 171 yards and the game-winning 56 yards touchdown run.

South Florida has allowed 403 rushing yards in their last two games on a 5.1 YPC average. Last week, Pitt running back Dion Lewis racked up 111 yards and 2 touchdowns.

They have had good success against WVU however, holding the potent Mountaineer rushing attack to just 153 YPG the past three years.

This line opened with West Virginia as the road favorite at -3. It moved to -3.5 at a few spots, however the consensus has kept the Mountaineers as a field goal chalk. The total on this game opened at 47.5.

West Virginia is just 3-7 ATS in their last 10 conference games, 2-6 ATS in their last 8 games as a favorite and 1-4 ATS in their last 5 games overall. The Bulls are 5-2 ATS in their last 7 games as an underdog and 13-6 ATS in their last 19 home games.

WVU has finished ‘over’ in 5 of last 7 games overall and USF is 4-1 ‘over’ in their last 5. The Bulls are also 9-3 ‘over’ in last 12 home games but the last 4 meetings between these two teams has stayed ‘under’.

West Virginia has been favored every time they've faced the Bulls but they have only covered once since 2005. They’ve split 2-2 SU with the average of just 35 total PPG.

The high in Tampa on Friday will be very hot at close to 90 degrees. By game time it will still be in the 80's with very little chance of any precipitation.